Education: Long live the classics

Blockbuster movies such as Troy will inspire an interest in classical culture, says Ann Widdecombe, but nothing replaces learning Latin and Greek

When the Harry Potter books and films came out, with their use of Latin spells and vocabulary, there was a rush of interest in the classics among American school children: the numbers taking the language for college credits soared.

This summer’s films Troy and Alexander the Great may well spearhead a similar revival in enthusiasm among teenagers here — but it will be for ancient history and the study of classical civilisation rather than for the Greek or Latin languages.

While I welcome anything that encourages children to study cultures that underlie our own, I do fear that these films will do nothing to reverse the steady disappearance of the languages of Latin and Greek in British schools and universities.

The statistics bear witness to the trend. While the numbers rise of children sitting exams in “classical civilisation” — a subject which relies on translations of the ancient texts rather than studying